-LRB- CNN -RRB- `` Lolita 's story reminded me of my own , '' says African-American actress and singer Robbyne Kaamil . `` My own relatives , my family ancestors , were captured and forced into slavery . ''

Captured in waters off Washington State in 1970 , Lolita is an orca -- a killer whale . Kaamil , who perceives clear parallels between Lolita 's life of captivity-for-profit and the human slave trade , was inspired to record `` Let The Girl Go : Free Lolita , '' a bold music video about Lolita , and a courageous interview on the parallels of captivity between human slaves and performing orcas .

Lolita is still living in Florida at the Miami Seaquarium . She 's been the focus of a concerted campaign to win her release . In January , Kaamil participated in a march in Miami that drew an impressive crowd estimated by the Miami Herald to be around 1,000 people .

Can a killer whale be a slave ? Literally ? `` It 's important to understand how horrendous it is to steal a baby orca from her family , force her to perform , and hold her in the equivalent of a bath tank until she dies . It 's a crime , '' Kaamil said .

Lolita has spent 44 years in a teacup . She is 20 feet long , living in a tank reportedly to be about 20 feet deep , 35 feet wide and 80 feet long . Free-living orcas usually travel 25 to 75 miles per day . Compared to say , 40 miles , 80 feet is about 1/2600th the size of an orca 's normal daily life .

Like a second lump of sugar , a whale named Hugo who had been captured from the same free-living whale community two years earlier , shared Lolita 's teacup for 10 years . Hugo died in 1980 after repeatedly ramming his head into the wall of the pool . Did he commit suicide ? Free-living orcas never do anything self-destructive . They have never even been seen fighting .

Consider Lolita 's isolation . At age 4 , she was taken from her mother . Free-living orcas live their entire lives traveling with their mothers , siblings and children . Unlike any other known creature , unlike elephants and humans , orcas like Lolita never leave their birth family . Free-living orcas frequently live into their 50s or beyond -LRB- they can live up to a century -RRB- . They often cooperate and help one another , and may perform midwife duties .

Forty-year veteran orca expert Ken Balcomb has told me that tooth marks on a recent healthy newborn suggest that another whale , likely its grandmother , assisted her daughter during a difficult birth by pulling the infant from her body .

Thousands of miles away , Lolita 's family has been without her . During these decades , the family desperately needed her . `` The captures of young whales in the 1960s and '70s really caused a long-term problem , '' Balcomb told me . The so-called `` resident '' orca families travel the U.S. West Coast off Washington , Oregon and California hunting fish . Before the captures they totaled about 120 whales . The captures took them down to about 70 . They managed to rebuild to 99 whales by the 1990s .

But when the whales removed as babies would have been the next maturing generation , rebuilding hit a wall : too few females . Forty years later , the population -- around 80 whales -- is losing one or two members a year . The whole U.S. resident population now has just two-dozen females of reproductive age . In some families , the only females are past reproductive age . Those families are doomed .

Lolita , who has never given birth , is now menopausal , her gifts to the future forever withheld by her denatured existence . By continuing to lure paying customers , Lolita continues to make money for her owners . Palace Entertainment , owner of the Miami Seaquarium , claims Lolita can no longer survive in the wild . But that 's not the proposal .

The proposal is to move her into a vastly larger open-water net-pen in her home waters of Washington State . There , she can be in vocal contact with her family . Depending on how that goes and whether after all this time there remains recognition , the possibility of full return to her family could be considered .

Lolita 's fish-hunting skills are by now somewhere between rusty and nonexistent , but free-living orcas routinely share food . Bottom line : What 's proposed for her is better than the situation she is in . Even death might seem preferable -- as Lolita 's companion Hugo seemed to think .

`` Most of us have a clear understanding about the cruelty of slavery . It is imperative to recognize the inhumanity of forcing any living being into captivity . '' Kaamil said .

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Carl Safina : Lolita , a captured killer whale , is living in Florida at the Miami Seaquarium in a confined space

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Safina : Lolita should be released into her home waters of Washington State so she can be with her family